He has done all things well
Twelfth Sunday After Trinity
Mark 7:31–37
Then [Jesus] returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to Him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged Him to lay His hand on him.
And taking him aside from the crowd privately, He put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, He sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more He charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” (ESV)
Prayer: Almighty and everlasting God, who created all things, we thank You that You have given us sound bodies, and have graciously preserved all our members from the power of the adversary: we ask You to give us Your grace so that we may rightly use our ears and tongues; help us to hear Your Word diligently and devoutly, and with our mouths to praise and glorify your grace, that no one is offended by our words, but that all may be edified by them; through your Son, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
In Christ Jesus, who has done all things well, dear fellow redeemed!
Martin Luther writes in the hymn, “Dear Christians One and All Rejoice,”
Fast bound in Satan’s chains I lay;
Death brooded darkly o’er me.
Sin was my torment night and day;
In sin my mother bore me.
Yea, deep and deeper still I fell;
Life had become a living hell,
So firmly sin possessed me.
Martin Luther summarizes well the Scriptural teaching of our sinful depravity, our doom, and our demoralizing life under Satan’s dominion since the fall into sin. Because of our sin, we live in darkness. God’s perfect creation was destroyed when sin entered the world. Through Adam and Eve’s disobedience, sin and death spread to all people. Murder, sickness, sadness, shame, grief, division, and death all became normal.
We see the effects of the fall in our everyday lives. Bodies fail. Relationships are damaged. Sin causes hardships. We want our lives to go smoothly, and be untroubled, and yet despite our best intentions and our best laid plans, we struggle with problems in our lives. I’m sure none of us thought, “I think I’ll have a bad relationship with my family,” and yet we find ourselves dealing with difficulties in our relationships with our children and parents. None of us got married thinking, “I think I’ll cause some problems in my marriage,” and yet we find ourselves doing things that we know will cause our spouse disappointment and grief. With St. Paul we say, “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:18,19). In addition to this, we like the man in our lesson, must deal with the physical effects of sin in our bodies. We must deal with disease, with disabilities, with weaknesses, and with death, in our lives and the lives of those we love. Sin creates real problems in our lives.
This is one of the reasons I cherish the Gospel of Mark, because in it he shows how drastically things change when Jesus enters the scene. Mark reveals our real Savior who comes to deal with our real problems in real ways. He is the almighty Son of God who causes the storms to cease, who casts out demons by his Word, who heals the sick, and truly forgives our very real sins.
This is why the friends of this deaf and mute man had brought him to Jesus and begged him to help him. They knew Jesus could help this man. It’s hard to imagine what life was like for that deaf and mute man. He was likely impaired from birth, unable to hear others or his own mother’s voice. He would have had no education, no daily conversations, no words of encouragement or love. Anything he muttered would have been unintelligible to others. But even worse than never hearing the voice of another human, he would have never been able to hear the promises of God and his Word. He was in the dark. In addition to this was the shame one received. People viewed disabilities and diseases as punishments for a great sin. We see an example of this in the Gospel of John when the Pharisees ask Jesus about the blind man at the temple, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2). Even today, Christians can be tempted to wrongly conclude that our troubles or lack of deliverance are a punishment from God.
But Jesus has pity on this poor, deaf and mute man. Before Jesus heals him, he looks up to heaven and sighs. It’s a sigh of pity for this man who had so deeply experienced the troubles of a fallen and sinful world and the attacks of the devil trying to drive him away from God. Mark writes, “And looking up to heaven, He sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.” All the devil’s schemes and attacks are destroyed with a word—“Ephphatha!” By the power of his Word, Jesus healed the man!
By healing this man, Jesus changed the rest of his life. He also revealed himself to be the Messiah the Old Testament believers had been looking for. Isaiah foretold seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, “In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the LORD, and the poor among mankind shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.” With his miraculous healings, Jesus was doing more than just showing his compassion and power. He was showing that he was the Messiah, the Son of God, who had the power to save. He was the one who would make all things new. He would restore what was lost in the fall.
Our Lord Jesus came to deliver us by giving up his own life on the cross and rising again on the third day so that Satan would have no power over us. He is our dear Savior, Lord, and Brother, who has taken us out of darkness into the kingdom of light. Every single one of us were spiritually deaf and mute. We couldn’t hear God, we didn’t know him, we didn’t love him. We were his enemies. But Jesus has taken us aside. He has spoken the word of God to us, through which he has opened our ears and our hearts to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
In our lesson Jesus took him aside away from the crowd. Since the man could only see, Jesus spoke with signs. He put his fingers into his ears, spit, and then touched the man’s tongue, indicating all that he would heal. This account at the very least sounds strange and at the worse offensive. Who would want someone touching their ears and tongue and spitting? But this is the way God chose to act. His own ways are always best.
It’s through these ordinary and seemingly strange ways that God works. He does the same today. St. Paul writes, “For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:22–25).
God uses Baptism to make you his child to transfer you from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of his Son. He uses his almighty Word to create and strengthen your faith and forgive you your sins.
The man who was mute needed real help. He needed a miracle. And God gave him one. Jesus spoke and the man was healed. God does the same for you. You came to church this morning with problems in your life—you’ve sinned against your spouse, spoken unkindly towards your neighbor, failed to love, have been selfish, greedy, worried, and anxious. You haven’t loved God with all your heart, soul, and mind. You’ve sinned and your sin deserves death. But Christ speaks his Word of life to you today. He is the almighty God who comes to serve us. The sin that infects your life, that pollutes your relationships and that brings disease and death to your body, Jesus has taken on himself. He bore the consequences of that sin on the cross, suffering and dying in your place.
The man who Jesus healed was blessed beyond compare. He had an entirely new life, but even with his newfound hearing and speaking, he would still face troubles in this world. He would sin and he would be sinned against. He would one day die. But now he knew his Savior whether he lived or died and that made all the difference. The same is true for you. We will live in this fallen world until Jesus calls us home. But whether we live or die, we know we are his. And that makes all the difference. The Lord might not perform a miracle like the one in our reading for us, but the miracle does still teach us what kind of Savior we have. He is a merciful Lord who cares about us in our troubles, and he has the power to do something about it. He is the almighty Son of God who causes the storms to cease, heals the sick, and truly forgives our sins. We go forward with the knowledge that death has lost its sting and that Jesus has brought us eternal life. Jesus has done marvelous things in our life, so that we can look upon him and say, “He has done all things well.” Amen.